What If You Bought Tesla Stock Instead Of One Of Its Cars?

The year is 2010 and let’s pretend for a moment that you’ve got some extra money to throw around. Let’s say you’re a car person and also a bit of a gadget lover and one of Tesla’s shiny new electric sports cars are starting to look pretty attractive. After a little research, you decide to bite the bullet and shell out $109,000 to get in on the ground floor of the Tesla experiment.

But what if, instead of driving off the lot in a brand-new, aerodynamic, environmentally friendly Muskmobile, you decided to use that money to take a gamble on a plucky South African entrepreneur and his dream of revolutionizing the automotive industry?

Well, for one thing, you’d have made a considerable amount of money.

This morning, Tesla’s stock hit an all-time high, rocketing up to $185.83 a share. As of this morning, the stock is up roughly 440% year-to-date, leading us to wonder: What would you stand to gain if, instead of laying down a cool $100K for a shiny new Tesla, you were to spend that money on the company’s stock?

In 2011, The New York Times did a similar experiment with Apple products and stock and even though Apple has been a public company roughly 30 years longer than Elon Musk’s fledgling Tesla Motors, the results are no less shocking. Unlike Apple, this isn’t a story of slow growth, it’s a case of serious wealth created almost overnight.

The findings are bound to be all the more painful for Tesla owners, a demographic that’s heavy on wealthy, tech-savvy types and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who’d be the most likely to invest in the company.

Given the meteoric rise of Tesla’s stock in the past 12 months, it would appear that a meager $96,570 investment back in August (when the stock hovered around $27) would yield a $557,676 profit as of this morning. Over half a million dollars in 13 months!

Since there’s little reliable data on Tesla’s stock price before its June 2010 IPO, we’ve only included post IPO valuations here, but it goes without saying that any earlier investments would bear even more fruit.

So sit back and see what could’ve been, if you had just put your money behind Elon Musk.

(Ed.: This is pretty basic, back-of-the-envelope math, based off Tesla’s stock price today of $184.75. Obviously, these values are subject to change and have not been adjusted for inflation, but they’re a rough guide.)